Page 11 of Bad Demon

She couldn’t be serious?

I glanced back at the shop, then at Zinny. “No … she wasn’t afraid. She was—”

“She was shaking. You’re a hellhound, and she’s a demon. She was trying to hide it, but she was terrified. I thought she was actually going to cry for a moment.”

Nausea slammed into my gut.

“Cry?” My voice was like sandpaper. “No …” I looked back at the shop. “No,” I repeated, not wanting to believe it.

“Yes,” she said.

“Fuck.” That would not fucking do. No fucking way.

I started back toward the shop, but Zinny grabbed my arm, stopping me.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t make females cry. I don’t scare them, and I don’t”—the sick feeling in my gut increased—“sexually harass them.”

“Going back there now will only make it worse. She wants you gone, and you need to respect that,” Zinnia said.

She was serious. I’d known her a long time, and I knew what that looked like. I might be a little more evolved than the hounds that had come before me, but I wasn’t that fucking evolved. If Zinnia said I’d scared the little demon, I’d fucking scared her.

“Fuck,” I said again and let her tug me back toward my bike.

We parted ways, and I headed for the clubhouse to await Lucifer, but it was the last place I wanted to go. I wanted to head back to that store and demand that the little female hiding inside not be afraid of me. Which made no fucking sense whatsoever.

You need to stay the fuck away.

I should. But I didn’t think I could.

ChapterThree

FERN

Zipping up my sweatshirt,I lifted the hood, checked the coast was clear, slipped out, and locked up behind me. After my run-in with that hound, I didn’t want to hang around the store. I hated that he’d scared me so badly, but I hated more that I’d let him.

It didn’t help that my fear response was to go on the offensive, no matter how afraid I was. It’d served me well in the past. In my experience, showing fear or weakness to a predator only excited them. When you showed fear, when you cried or cowered, they got off on it, and the pain that followed was even worse.

I yanked on the door to check it was locked—one, two, three, fourhard yanks.That hound had thrown me off completely because the more shit I’d given him, the more he’d seemed to enjoy it.

I shook my head. I needed to learn when to shut my damn mouth, but it was no use because fear was a trigger. When given the choice of fight or flight, most chose the former. But for most of my life, flight hadn’t been an option, so as soon as my fear spiked, it was muscle memory, and I automatically switched into fight mode.

Cursing under my breath at my stupidity, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed by the pricks who’d been hanging around or a giant meathead of a hellhound. Dipping my head, I started along the street.

Fuck. Did I lock the door?

Yes, you locked the fucking door.

But what if I hadn’t?

Cursing, I jogged back, gripped the door handle, and yanked it again—one, two, three, four.Definitely locked.

I headed back down the street. Agatheena had said she’d have information for me when I went back to her cottage, but it wouldn’t hurt to do some research of my own. The more I knew about what I was, the better.

There was only one place I could go that might have the information I needed. It took me twenty minutes to reach my destination, but finally, the massive building loomed up ahead. Back in the 1800s, it’d been known as the Sunnydale Insane Asylum but had been decommissioned in the early 1980s. Nothing about the monstrosity looked like it belonged here. It was as if it’d been transported here from another country and plonked in the middle of the city two hundred years ago.

It was massive, with dark, slick stone walls and arched windows, like a medieval cathedral. Its name implied warmth and light, but this place was the complete opposite.

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